Have you ever used Google’s photo search feature? Type in ‘cat’ and it will pretty reliably bring up any cats in your photo collection. It’s not perfect – it mistakes Land Rovers for cats some of the time – but it’s getting better all the time. And that is the point of machine learning. Among much else, machine learning, a subset of which is called deep learning, now powers Google photo search, speech recognition on Android, and video recommendations on YouTube.

The term ‘mechatronics’ was coined in 1971 by a Japanese engineer working for the Yaskawa Electric Corporation. As the word suggests, it originally combined mechanical engineering and electronics. But it has grown to encompass other disciplines such as control engineering, computer engineering, telecommunications and systems engineering.

GCSE/IGCSE maths is such a fundamental qualification in the UK that it is required for the vast majority of jobs. It demonstrates a sufficient level of numeracy, reasoning and problem-solving to be able to tackle everyday problems and forms the basis for further study should the learner decide to pursue it. GCSE/IGCSE exams can be taken at any age, though they are typically taken at 16, the compulsory earliest school-leaving age.

A Levels are the gold standard in the UK, and are the keys to a university education. Universities make offers to students in terms of their A Level results, e.g. AAA, AAB, BBB, etc. So they are extremely important qualifications and proper preparation is indispensable. For the majority, two years are spent at school preparing for A Levels. For those who cannot attend school, are home-schooled or want extra tuition, distance learning is becoming a more viable option with the advent of educational technologies.

Digital currencies like Bitcoin are in the middle of an epic explosion. Bitcoin and similar currencies are worth 6 times their value at the beginning of the year. Currently around $6.6 billion of digital tokens changes hands every day, and we could be at the beginning of a global financial realignment as cryptocurrencies go mainstream.

For those who don’t know it, Britain’s Open University is something of a national treasure. Its abiding image is of bearded professors with questionable fashion sense delivering maths and computer science lectures on grainy black-and-white TV sets in the early hours of the morning when airtime is cheap. Established in 1969, the OU delivers degree and postgraduate courses to mainly remote students, though it does have a campus in the city of Milton Keynes.